Colleges to raise tuition 7 percent

SEATTLE – Washington’s 34 community and technical colleges decided this week to raise tuition by 7 percent to help them deal with the most significant budget cuts they’ve seen in more than a decade.

The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges voted to cut allocations to the colleges by a net 8.6 percent after the tuition increase is factored in, board President Charlie Earl said.

The colleges are talking about laying off administrative staff, cutting the number of classes they offer and keeping a tight lid on spending that was already cut by about 4.3 percent during the current school year.

Earl said cutting academics will be the last thing on the list.

The colleges will maintain their open-door enrollment policies but will have to cut classes, and students will feel that impact.

“Eventually students won’t be able to get an acceptable schedule for their educational goals. That’s how it gets limited,” Earl said. “At some point the realities of the fiscal conditions of the state run counter to the aspirations of the people.”

The budget cut is the worst the colleges have seen in a long time.

“We have experienced it before, but not anywhere near this level,” Earl said, adding that the last time the colleges saw their budgets go down significantly was at the beginning of the decade, but those cuts were much smaller.

College officials also acknowledged the efforts the Legislature made to balance the state’s priorities, and Earl said the colleges felt lawmakers heard them and worked hard for their students.

In the 2009 academic year, the colleges served about 158,000 students, about 8,000 more than the state budgeted. Earl said he expects the number of students the colleges can serve will drop by thousands in the next academic year, but he could not predict an exact number.

College officials worry that these budget cuts will hurt their ability to meet the needs of people who have lost their jobs because of the economic downturn, he said.